03-03-2004 16:35, mkelkar2003 wrote:
> Kelkar: Just a quick follow up. Is the present date of Rig Veda
> based on the former or the later date of IE dispersal? Thanks again.
The date of the Rigveda must be later -- much later -- than the date of
the IE dispersal, whatever it was, but otherwise is an independent
question. Comparative linguistics by itself yields only relative dates,
not absolute ones, and some extralinguistic evidence is always necessary
to establish the latter.
The Rigveda contains many references to horses and horse-drawn chariots.
The horse was domesticated in the Eurasian steppe belt probably during
the fourth millennium BC, but horse-breeding did not reach South Asia
until the second millennium BC. I don't exclude the possibility that
domesticated horses were known to the Harappan civilisation as
occasional exotic imports (though even that hasn't been demonstrated),
but they certainly didn't play any important role there. Chariots didn't
exist _anywhere_ till ca. 2100 BC, and the oldest and most primitive
ones are known from the Sintashta culture (east of the Urals).
The Rigveda is also the _only_ Old Indic text that refers to a Bronze
Age setting (so apparently do the oldest Avestan texts) and therefore
may have been composed before the advent of the Iron Age, which in that
part of the world means 1200-1000 BC. The period ca. 1700-1200 BC is
therefore a likely date for both the penetration of northern India by
Indic-speakers and the composition of the Rigvedic hymns.
Piotr